The Witch in the Lake (6 page)

Merilee almost never visited the room these days. When she crunched that carpet of herbs underfoot, the pungent smell made her think of her sister's white face when she was ill. Merilee wanted to remember her as she'd been before that, but lately it was growing harder to recall her laugh, or the secrets they had shared.

After lunch, when the soup was gone and their ‘tonics' drunk, Aunt Beatrice saw Francesca to her room for the siesta. Before she retired herself, Beatrice turned to Merilee. ‘While we're resting,' she told Merilee, ‘you could sort that rosemary and thyme you said you found in the forest. I'm getting a bit short of them both. I trust you at least know one from the other by now. Your sister used to sort and mark them for me when she was still in leading strings. Leave them in two packets on the dining table.'

‘Yes, Aunt,' Merilee replied stonily, and went to her room.

She kicked the bed post angrily. Oh, why hadn't she remembered to pick the herbs? Now she'd have to collect them this afternoon, and get back early, before the old beetle woke up. Her time with Leo would be cut short, and there was so little of it, anyway.

‘I should have given her the hemlock,' she muttered, as she looked in her drawer for her cloth bag. But she felt soothed as she found her beautiful mahogany recorder and put it in the bag with her latest music score. Then she took off her sandals, swinging them from her fingers as she crept soundlessly out of her room, across the cool stone floor and out into the fresh afternoon.

Merilee ran through the fields that bordered the village. Cherry trees pink with blossom embroidered the hills and rows of grape vines wove straight as seams down towards the forest.
Run like the wind
, she told herself wildly, and suddenly she was filled with such freedom and happiness that she sang it out loud. Her long skirts swished round her ankles and she picked them up, feeling the grass scratch her bare legs and the wind whip against her.

Leo was waiting at their tree, by the path that led to the lake. Here the trees grew as close together as teeth in a comb, and the path was so overgrown with roots and pine needles that you would never have noticed it if you didn't know it was there.

‘What a miracle!' Merilee laughed. ‘You, sir, are an
early
Leo Pericolo. How did this happen? How can there be such huge and monumental changes in the universe? Just a minute and let me examine you—perhaps you are a changeling, a transformation!'

Leo grinned, and bowed deeply. ‘Oh, Miss Merilee, it is me, your Leo that shared your milk when we were babies. Look, I've still got the scar from when we spilt our blood.'

Merilee frowned, the image of Aunt Beatrice and her shouting face suddenly looming at the front of her mind.

Leo, who knew her so well, grinned. ‘Ah, don't worry about old rat-face. Did you bring your recorder?'

Merilee nodded and drew it out of her bag.

‘Let's have a song then. Have you made up anything new?'

‘Yes, it's going quite well, I think. But it's hard to get the whole thing there in your head when you can only play in snatches. Aunt Beatrice hears even when I play under the bedclothes, and comes running in with a face like a beetroot.'

‘You know, I go crazy sometimes thinking of the stupid rules that woman makes in your house. I've never understood how she can lord it over everyone, even your father.'

Merilee shrugged. ‘He says he just wants an easy life. It seems like Aunt Beatrice is the only one with any spark in our family—and she's got enough for ten. But it's curious, you know, even though she's so busy with her own concerns, she always seems to know exactly what other people in the house are doing. It's a bit scary.'

The gift of the recorder had been the only agreeable event occurring after Laura's illness. A week after she'd disappeared, the young troubadour who'd danced with her knocked at the door. He held a recorder like the one his friend had played during that evening. ‘I'd like you to have it,' he said to Merilee, pressing it into her hand. ‘It was the last time you saw her happy. The music will remind you of her dancing. You know, I'll never forget your sister.'

Aunt Beatrice, who had come to the door at the same moment, smiled widely at the young man and told him how sorry she was that they were all too busy for him to come in. ‘Some other time when you are passing this way,' she said, and firmly clanged the door shut in his face.

‘I'll let you keep it,' she told Merilee, ‘only on the condition that you never play it in this house. It will make your father and mother's grief worse, and I can't abide that silly recorder music anyway.'

Leo settled himself on the leafy ground, his back resting comfortably against the tree. ‘Let's not think about them all for a while. They're enough to turn milk sour.' He turned to Merilee. ‘Will you play your new song for me?'

Merilee took out a sheet of music.

The notes she blew were so high and pure, and the rhythm so lively that it shifted Leo's mood entirely. He suddenly felt like dancing. He tapped his knuckles on his knees, and let the music wind around him. Like a shimmering thread it tied up all his thoughts and feelings, holding them tight, then releasing him, sending him tumbling into some new place that had no walls or fences, just endless fields of happiness. He could have listened to her forever, there in the forest, under the tree.

‘
Magnifico!
' he cried when she finished. He clapped so hard his hands were crimson.

Merilee laughed with delight. When Leo looked at her like that, with such enthusiasm and admiration, she felt different, clever,
spectacular—
why, maybe she truly could do anything! She might travel the world with troubadours, play at court, compose new harmonies that no one had ever dreamt of before.

‘Maybe one day soon I'll be good enough to earn my living this way,' Merilee said. ‘And then we'll just run away, we'll escape like two birds out of a cage, and fly!'

‘
Mamma mia
, Merilee,' Leo grinned, ‘you're beginning to sound like me! Why don't you play another song and we'll pretend we're in Venice, in that grand Piazza San Marco, with all the gondolas gliding up and down the canals—'

‘And the fat merchants in their silk robes strutting around the streets like pigeons—'

‘Calling out, “Who's that pretty musician in the square, I'll pay her 1000 lira for a song!”'

And so Merilee played on until the air amongst the thick trees grew cold and sunlight hardly glimpsed through the leaves.

‘Oh, Leo,' Merilee groaned, when they both came back to the world of the forest and looked about them, ‘why do we always do this?'

‘Because we never have enough time, that's why.' Leo suddenly looked fierce again, like he had last Wednesday coming back from the lake, and Merilee's heart sank.

‘I told Aunt Beatrice that I was late last time because I was looking for her wretched rosemary and thyme,' Merilee said. ‘So now I'll have to go and pick some. Only I'm going to be late again.'

Leo sprang up. ‘I'll help you. We'll do it together, it'll be quicker.'

But just then, as Merilee was packing her recorder into her bag and Leo was putting on his hat, they both heard a noise. It sounded like a branch snapping, further up the path.

‘Quiet!' hissed Leo. They both held their breath. Merilee's heart was pounding so hard she couldn't hear anything else.

A whiff of perfume, thick and spicy, drifted up. Merilee's stomach tightened. She smelled dried herbs, rosemary, marjoram. A feeling of dread so deep settled in her that her body felt bound to the earth, as if she'd grown roots and could never get up.

A thick-bodied woman in a long black dress strode out of the bushes.

‘There you are, you sneaky little wasp!' Aunt Beatrice cried. She dived at Merilee, pulling her up by her long dark hair.

‘Leave her alone!' cried Leo. He tried to catch hold of Merilee's hands but Beatrice swung around to face Leo. Scarlet rose up into her face, colouring it completely the way a drop of paint colours a glass of water in a second.

‘You devil!' she spat. ‘You dare to talk to me like that? What are you doing with my niece, sneaking around like the viper you are!'

‘Aunt Beatrice,' Merilee whispered. Her voice shook with shock. ‘We just happened to meet here in the forest. I was looking for more herbs, because the ones I collected the other day were not good, not—'

Beatrice let out a bark of laughter. Her mouth opened so wide that Leo and Merilee could see the great black gaps where her rotting teeth had been pulled.

‘More lies you're going to tell me? Come on then, give me some more rope to hang you with!'

Merilee was silent. Her legs trembled so much she was sure they'd just fold under her, and she'd sink to the ground like someone in a stupor.

‘I knew you hadn't been looking for herbs, my girl,' Aunt Beatrice hissed. ‘Since when have you ever interested yourself in my work? I ask you to learn the slightest thing about it, the slightest thing, and you sigh and tap your foot and the next day forget anything I said.'

Glancing up at the crimson Beatrice, Merilee found it hard to remember how such a face had ever broken into a smile.

‘So when you told me you were out late collecting herbs,' Beatrice went on, ‘I wanted to laugh in your face. And sure enough, you left none on the table, and there was not a hint of them in your room.'

Merilee looked down at the ground. She noticed a small brown cricket hop near the toe of her sandal. Aunt Beatrice is about to squash me, she thought, and I'm as helpless as that little insect. Only it can leap away and I can't.

‘Oh, why don't you find someone else to bully!' Leo burst out. ‘What does it matter to you if Merilee has a little fun sometimes—'

‘Fun?' Aunt Beatrice spat the word, like water hissing over hot coals. ‘You think she has fun with you, son of a murderer? What can you offer her—you, with your family of failures! You come from the loins of a dribbling madman, from a demon whose name I won't speak, and you want to stand in the company of my Merilee?'

‘Aunt!' cried Merilee. ‘Stop it!'

‘What demon?' asked Leo. ‘Who?'

‘You take her here, to the forest, down near the lake—you don't think about her safety, oh no, only your
fun
.' She bent down with a grunt and picked up the recorder left lying on the ground. ‘I heard this silly noise from the top of the forest. Enjoyed your concert, did you? Nice to be entertained.'

Merilee stared at her recorder lying in Beatrice's plump hand. She thought of the sweat of her aunt's palm on the smooth wood, the smell of her heavy skin on the mouthpiece. ‘Please give that back to me,' she said, trying to control the disgust in her voice. ‘It's mine.'

Aunt Beatrice swung round to face her. ‘You can't be trusted, Merilee. You're a deceiving little liar, and liars don't deserve to own anything. You're going to be punished, my girl,' and she grabbed Merilee's arm and began to pull her towards the path.

‘She's not
your
girl, Signora,' Leo cried after them. ‘It's not up to you to make the rules. You're not her mother!'

Beatrice stopped on the path. ‘How dare you speak to me like that, you vermin. I'll see that you're punished too—and
santo dio
, you'll wish you'd never been born.'

‘You can't touch me,' Leo insisted. He was almost dancing with rage. ‘You've no right. Merilee's parents are the ones to decide her fate and mine.'

Beatrice shook her head. ‘Ah yes, poor Francesca.' She sighed, her face settling into mock-sad lines. ‘My sister, who's so wrung with grief she can hardly get up from her bed. You think she can make a decision about anything? Pah!'

As Leo glared at Beatrice, he slid without thinking into
seeing
her. It was as easy as diving into a pond. And there at the bottom, at the heart of her, sat a little girl. She was curled with her knees drawn up to her chest, her head lowered against them. As Leo looked further, he saw she was all closed up like a clam, except for her hands. Her arms drooped beside her, and her palms lay open, empty, like bowls waiting to be filled.

Leo felt a stirring of pity. She was the loneliest thing he had ever seen. But then Beatrice moved, giving Merilee a yank, and suddenly a shadow dropped over the little girl. She looked up and he glimpsed her face. A sickness rose at the back of his throat. The girl stared at him with snake eyes, yellow, flickering. Her green scales glittered and her forked tongue darted in and out of her mouth like a warning. She had a snake's head.

Leo closed his eyes.

‘You're coming with me, my girl,' Beatrice said as Merilee struggled to pick up her sheet of music and push it into her bag. ‘We're going away for a while.'

‘Where?' cried Leo and Merilee together.

Merilee tried to hang onto Leo's glance, but Beatrice was pulling her up the path, through the thick-growing trees. He stumbled after them, their voices drifting up the hill away from him. He caught snatches of words, but his own terror was jumbling everything he heard.

‘For how long?' Merilee asked. ‘How long will I be away?'

Leo heard no reply.

The last he saw of Merilee was her cloth bag, flapping open and empty against her shoulder as she ran.

Leo crouched on the forest floor. He kept thinking about the bag. He couldn't think of anything else. As soon as Aunt Beatrice came into his mind, or Merilee's tear-wet face, he thought of the bag. The soft canvas, the black clasp undone, the way it had hung open, empty.

He began to run through the trees, back down to the path where they'd met. He had to find Merilee's song. It seemed so important suddenly that he could hardly see the bushes, dull and matted with dusk.